(lively instrumental music) (lively orchestral music) Here it is, Ken Block's Audi Sport Quattro. Replica. (all laughing) (rhythmic instrumental music) (rhythmic instrumental music) Wait, is this chair number one? 001. Do we know that this is chair number one? (Ken laughing) What numbers are those? Is that two and three? I don't know.
They all say one. This is chair number one.
(Ken laughing) No, no, no, this is chair number 43. (group exclaiming) And you were sitting on it. Dang. What's yours? If it's 66, this is crazy. 69. Three.
(all laughing) Do it for Dale. (rhythmic instrumental music) (rhythmic instrumental music) (rhythmic instrumental music) Welcome back to "Ring Leaders," today, we're going to talk about Ken's Sport Quattro, replica. Why don't we just start right off? I like the asterisk.
No, no, no, but I think it's super important, because, you bought a replica for a reason, 'cause you had an RS200, a one of 200, RS200, and it was too valuable to drive hard. Yeah, it wasn't necessarily that, but, we had an evo engine, and it already had a lot of horsepower, there aren't a lot of those in the Sport Quattro world. They're all, part of that 200 homologation number, they don't have much horsepower, and they're not that much fun. An important point with this though, is I want to drive this car, and I don't want to worry about, if I put it into a snowbank, playing around in my hometown, in the snow. I don't collect cars, like as a collector, I have cars that I drive.
Yeah. No, I hoard cars that I don't drive, so it's cool. I wouldn't really say collecting, but it's fine. Hey my name is Brian, and I have a carcaine problem. Big thanks to Toyo for showcasing, our two builds, in their booths, creating an entire booth around our projects. They did a really good job with it, so, Toyo's a great partner of mine for the race team, and to be able to be a part of this build, has been very cool, and not only that, debuting it at the show. Yeah, and honestly, giving a reason for Brian to finish his build.
(Ken laughing) 'Cause otherwise, if it didn't have to be in the Toyo booth- You might not know this, but I've been sponsored by Toyo, for way longer than Ken, I do static testing for their tires.
(Ken laughing) So if you missed it, in the last episode, we went to Germany, to LCE, who specializes in building Sport Quattros. They actually could not build us a Sport Quattro, as fast as we wanted one, which was in, now, like tomorrow. Like zero time.
Yeah, zero time, we needed it yesterday. So instead, we bought their demo vehicle off of them, which is a vehicle called Turbo Monster, but that isn't, Ken didn't want a red car. So-
Yeah. We went through a lot, in, I don't know, a month and a half, to completely strip this car down to a shell, paint it, bring it all back up, change a few other things. Imagine what Ken could do with a car, if he had the 17 years, I had to build mine. (Ken and Ron laughing) Oh, it's 17 years now. It's 16 since I know you.
(Ken laughing) So you've known about that car for 16 years, I had it for a whole year before I met you. You sold DC, got married, had a family,
(Ken laughing) started and launched a rally career, all before I got my car running. But more on my car next episode, for now, let's actually go take a look at this thing. (rhythmic instrumental music) (rhythmic instrumental music) (rhythmic instrumental music) The first thing that hits me, outside look, that it's white now, we painted the whole thing white. And that he didn't paint it flat black.
(Ken laughing) 'Cause every other car you own is flat black. That's true. We talked a lot about this internally, which is body in white. And I've had a lot of white cars, in my past. Can I stop you for a second, to define body in white, when rally cars are built, and they come off the factory, that's referred to as a body in white delivery, which means they take a almost finished production car, and it's all in white, right? That's where the body in white idea came from, so if you're a rally fan, body in white is usually the first time you get to see, the new generation rally car, before they put a livery package on it. So it was just a all white car, so that really reminds me of a stock rally car, before you put all the graphics on it. This is pretty much a rally car, so yeah.
Yeah. So, that's why I wanted all white, I've had a lot of white cars in my past, but now with the Audis that we're doing this year, I wanted to have a new theme, and I wanted to go all white, so this is the start of that. So the nice big grills, leaving everything black there, that makes sense, but adding some very simple retro style graphics. Brian actually found some old photos of Audis, with this sort of chevron look. There's been a lot of different variations of graphics from, the brown and white, and yellow and red. But they haven't had something, really, really distinct like this, but we found this, and really liked this. This a little bit more of a rare, I think most people think the S1 E2,
Yeah. is like the classic Audi livery, but this is actually a little bit of an earlier design, which is super cool.
And I love it on here because it's that subtle kind of like, you get it, but it's not garish. You could drive this on the street. If you know, you know.
Yeah. It's the, if you know, you know livery. It really is. And because you watched this, now you know. You're welcome. And a lot of other details too, so that you can drive it on the street, not making it too obnoxious. The gray on white, for the windshield banner, the subtle,
Best part. '80s graphics directly from Audi, that we were able to put on the doors. Just hanging on this for one second, when we were at Audi Tradition, a lot of the race cars from the '80s and '90s, had this gradiated Audi logo, Ken saw that thing, and he's like, "Timo, let's put that on order, please." It looks so good on here. It was actually a factory design that ended up on all the race cars too.
Right. And they used that on the rally cars, but also very prominent, on their early DTM car. That's a really nice touch. But then we have a little touch of some modern here, with the sponsors that are part of the program, obviously Audi, Hoonigan, Rotiform and Toyo Tires. Some of my current livery elements, along with LCE High Performance, which is where the car came from. So yeah, externally, I really like the look and I love '80s graphics, so, this was really a dream come true. I mean really just like this.
Yeah. And this,
Yeah. is everything. I dunno if you could tell, Ken, big fan of fonts, big fan of graphics, and graphic design especially- And big fan of box flares.
Yeah. So this is everything
(Ken laughed) that Ken wanted.
This is everything you've wanted. This is all he really ever wanted in life. (rhythmic instrumental music) (rhythmic instrumental music) (rhythmic instrumental music) (rhythmic instrumental music) So this wheel is based off of, what was on the S1 E2. They were magnesium, they were a much smaller wheel, we've kind of re-imagined it with Rotiform, it's sort of based on actually their ROC wheel in some ways, the engineering is, but we changed a bunch of stuff, so we added this lip here, we added this extra groove here, a super deep dog bowl here, to look like the motor sport wheels of the early '80s. So they're actually calling it the ROC-H, 'cause it's like the Hoonigan version of that wheel. And they stamped it in there, look at the sizing.
Looks so cool. And this to me, was such a motor sports thing, because on a motor sports wheel, they don't really care how it looks, it has to do it's job, and it's like, there's information that needs to be on it, they just write it on the spoke, they don't put it in the back. Stamped that in.
I just loved, how that all looked. Rotiform put this together, in that short amount of time. Brian went right up on that deadline too. (Ron laughing) They put these together in zero time for this car, and your car. So thank you Rotiform, for being able to deliver us wheels in two weeks. The wheels make the car too.
Yeah. It's wrapped in of course, the Toyo, R888Rs, it looks proper on here. That's such a good looking tire. And a nice sticky tire at that. Nice sticky tire, 255s all around. I mean, it's a very nice modern take, on that old rally wheel. 'Cause it looks like a motor sport, like a tarmac rally tire a little bit, with the big side cuts and everything. It's a good setup.
It is. (rhythmic instrumental music) (rhythmic instrumental music) All right, so on the actual body and chassis, right? So, we explained this before, but this car was built by LCE, in the same way that Audi used to build the Sport Quattros back in the day, and what that was, was actually taking two cars, right? Taking the back half of a coupe, front half of a 4,000, chopping them, changing the floor plan out, doing a bunch of different things, so that you can get this short wheel base, which is like 12 and a half inches shorter than a regular Quattro. That made it handle a lot better, 'cause one of the problems, while all wheel drive was really fast in the gravel, on tarmac, they found the cars kind of hard to move around hairpins and things like that, so they gave it this really, really short wheel base, which makes it so that it's a full commitment car, and Ken's going to find that out in a few episodes, apparently the only way to rotate it, is with as much anger as possible. Well, I did experience that in Germany. (car engine roaring) (car engine roaring) (group chattering) This thing will be full commitment. It also didn't have a handbrake, so.
That too. But if you look real closely, in the paint, you will notice that, that is not orange peel, that's a weave, because the entire body is a mixture of carbon and carbon Kevlar. So you've got these, these, (car body clanking) even the roof panel. So think about how lightweight this thing probably is, because you've got carbon, and even the bumpers, wing and everything, the entire thing is carbon Kevlar, or carbon, depending on- So, for the non Audi nerds, what are the main takeaways for you on the shortened version? There's different windshield angles, there's different B pillars, this has all the right things. There was a few companies, that used to make shortened Ur-Quattros back in the day, like Dialynx and a few things like that, and not all of them did the steep window angle. So they did a steep window angle, and it's reportedly for two reasons, one, drivers complained about reflections, in the glass, so a steeper angle gets less reflections, but the other one, which is a huge argument as to how important that was, was that if you took a coupe angle, right? The windshield now ends up here, and you have that much less room between your helmet and the wind screen, which also creates more reflections, so it was kind of, the combination of the two. Fight me on that.
The more you know. People in the comments already, talking shit on that one.
Of course. Real Audi nerds know. And really just overall, it just doesn't have that look. This has that boxy, that this is the visual, that you always had It's ugly beauty. Like really, if you looked at the side of this, you wouldn't be like, "Wow,
That's the story. they really nailed the lines on that car." That's the story of what makes rally cars cool. It's all function.
It's all function. 100% Function. It was designed with a T-square, and a protractor. (rhythmic instrumental music) Let's start with the seats, we got Recaro Pole Position Classics. So this is actually a seat that they brought back, 'cause it was a classic seat, and when we were looking for seats, I sent Ken the link for this, and I didn't even realize that in the link, it said "Walter Röhrl approved." There's like a photo of Walter Röhrl, I'm like, "All right, that's clearly the seat." That's pretty cool. We were trying to link together a bit of the graphics, from my current livery, and we didn't want to do very much on the exterior, so we decided to do something on the seat, so I think that this pattern, same thing I'm wearing. Also the same thing on the Modernica chair, just throwing that out there,
(Ken laughing) almost the exact same concept. But honestly, it's that subtle kind of touch where, you start looking at this car, and you notice all the little details, that's a great little detail to add on the street car, I think it looks amazing. It's really a matter of mixing some old, with some new, and we happened to have a Walter Röhrl signature on this car. (Ken laughing) Small flex. Do not have that, on your car? No, Uncle Walter hasn't come over yet. (Ken laughing) Do you have a handbrake?
I do. Oh, is it bigger than mine? It's bigger.
(Ken laughing) I made it two inches bigger, just 'cause.
(Ken and Brian laughing) But, speaking about the handbrake, that handbrake is actually pretty special. That is the backup handbrake for the Hoonitruck. I had three of them made, because we snapped a handbrake that one time on set, remember? So I was like "Oh, let's just make extras," and it's been sitting in my office forever. Full aggressive.
And there it is. I love that we have the fuses on the dashboard. Fuses on the dash is such a rally thing. This is like full Group B stuff, back in the day. Actually not even Group B- Just rally stuff. Old-school rally stuff, was having fuses on the dashboard, random toggle switches. Badly labeled.
Yeah, badly labeled, yeah. But the reason for the fuses on the dashboard is, so that your co-driver could change out fuses if something pops. So you're driving, the headlights go out, and you're like, "I'll, just throw another blade- Yeah, you think about it now, modern rally cars just have that one big ECU center, with all the buttons, everything's a PDM. By the way, I think there's a lot of work that still needs to go on, inside this car. (Ken laughing) For sure. Like you said, this is a first iteration, this is V1. By the way, CAE shifter, nice little cable shifter that's connected to an 01E 6-Speed trans. These did not originally come with a 6-Speed, they just came with a basic 5-Speed, so it's a much nicer, and much stronger transmission. And then that's connected to some massive Porsche 6-pots. Yeah, and then some KWs, which I think are like a V3, so you just want to get under the hood. You could see the KWs from under the hood.
All right, fine, fine. I wanna see. (rhythmic instrumental music) (rhythmic instrumental music) So this is actually quite different than what came in the original Sport Quattro. Although Sport Quattro was available in a 20 valve, this is a more modern 20 valve, but it's a bit of a Frankenstein setup. You have a 3B style head, which came in S2s, Audi 200s, things like that. But then the bottom end, is actually out of a Eurovan, and it actually came out of a diesel. And that's the push it to a 2.5, right? This came stock as a 2.2. So it's a 2.5 bottom on it, and it's got a bunch of goodies in it. The dyno chart said that it ran a 736 horsepower, as it sits like this. (car engine roaring) (dyno wheels droning) That's pretty sick.
It's kind of wild to think, 'cause the rally cars had like 350 in them, 400. But then there's also a bunch of other small stuff in here, that you don't notice. You've got this massive Wagner Tuning intercooler, which, from what I've been told, is a prototype item, 'cause I have not actually seen this thing available. It's a really nice piece, comes with this really nice support bar that you can kind of see through here as well, hold it all together. You're a little jealous of the mesh. I am. This weird '80s grid. Well, it looks like, overhead lighting covers,
Right. which I really am stoked on.
Yeah. Yeah, this is really nice, my kit doesn't have that. And then on top of all that, so then you've got, this is basically like a Garrett 30, slightly modified. G-Series.
Yeah. Like a G30. You'll notice there's not a radiator in the car, so you this huge intercooler, radiator is mounted in the back, so all the plumbing goes off of here, and out to the back of that way. Well, you forgot to mention the very nice strut bar here on top, and the KW suspension you see, poking out at the top. And the special thing about these, they're not V3s, they're not Clubsports, these are the Motorsport edition, KW shocks, which just means way better valving, not that Clubsports are bad, but these are Motorsports backed, full, over built, everything ready to go, I don't know, I nerd out about that stuff, 'cause KW does really cool street stuff, and motorsport, and these are the Motorsport versions. Man, all right, I gotta get one more look at this thing, just from the side, it just looks so good. You did well Ken, you did well. (rhythmic instrumental music) (rhythmic instrumental music) Brian how hard has it been for you, not talking about your car? Is it like that meme, with the kid, that's got the vein popping out- I have been talking about my car though. They just cut it all out.
That's true. I probably filmed enough of the episode of my car, it's just in our background. For now, Ken's got the coolest street car out of all of us. You said it, not me. (Ken and Ron laughing) I definitely didn't say it. (Ken and Ron laughing) But the thing about this too though, I haven't even driven this thing yet. So, you know, in typical fashion, as a race car driver, I'll need to tinker and play with setups, and power delivery, and how the handbrake works, and probably tweak some of the- Little stuff. Visual stuff.
Develop. But as a starting point, I like very much. Yeah, I mean we did rush to get these cars ready for SEMA, which means that you cut a few corners, as you'll see next week on my car. Oh, this is really slippery. It's really slippery. These things could use a 5-point harness. How we've gotten anywhere. (All laughing) (car engine rumbling)
